Would commerce continue in SL if Permissions were Abandoned?

Nop, you are mistaken. Communism is based on scarcity, just as capitalism is. It is just a different way to distribute scarce goods. If there are no scarce goods anymore because anything can be replicated at zero cost, both communism and capitalism become obsolete. Communism is an experiment in suppressing greed (an experiment that has failed). But in a society of abundance created by replicating devices, greed would simply die.

As I said above:

This is similar to my thread. LOL

Seems to me that a grid can certainly exist, and some forms of commerce may thrive, without any permissions at all. But that commerce would be starkly different from what we have now in SL, and to me, much less interesting.

There certainly are plenty of web sources of copyrighted content that make the creators some money. The content leaks freely--into SL, among other places--and the creators have to expend a significant part of their income (or theoretically, time they could be spending creating more content) if they hope to control violations. It works, just not very well.

Those who create the same sorts of content in SL (textures, 3D models, perhaps audio) face much the same problem already because that content can have value outside the SL grid.

What's different about OpenSim is that it makes *all* content that was before protected by the SL permissions system open game for wholesale copying, with no effective means of policing. So, for the first time, scripters and animators (at least) realize that their stuff is protected by only a very thin membrane, and would flood out uncontrollably the instant LL agrees to asset transfers with any third party grids.

The other difference--which is of concern only to the minority of folks who don't want to engage in IP theft--is that the SL permissions system, for all it's limitations, is at least a standard license, conveniently expressed as an attribute of the licensed thing itself. With few exceptions, whatever the permissions system allows you to do, you're entitled to do, and entitled to do only that.

That's in contrast to assets where the license grant is separate from the content, and not self-enforcing. That is already problematic for resale-permitted textures, animations, etc. in SL; it would be a much bigger problem if everything one touches is licensed under separate and possibly idiosyncratic terms.

So a lot of little things that generate little bits of income to creators just wouldn't be worth distributing anymore, nor worth a buyer's hassle of tracking their actual licensed permissions. Only the most expensive things--made even more expensive by more labor-intensive enforcement--would have any market value at all.

Communism (as originally envisioned by Marx) involved workers owning their individual work places. IIRC, it said nothing about them owning each other's work places.

As labour productivity increases, it takes fewer and fewer people to produce. As it takes fewer and fewer to produce, systematic unemployment increases. As a result, there will be fewer and fewer jobs, yet demand will continue to grow along with the population. As a result, we will need to become more and more socialist over time. This is the kind of change Marx was envisioning. He was very premature in his predictions.. even today we are not at the stage yet where we need to adopt socialism outright, but we do have social saftey nets such as welfare and employment insurance, and have thus adopted some aspects of socialism into our mostly capitalist economies.

Even if all other production costs are nil, resources will remain scarce and unless we start using AI's, design and art will still involve humans at the production level. Likely policing and other services will still need to involve humans as well, but if they are the only ones working, how are the rest of us going to support ourselves unless we radically change the way we view property?

We are a long way from that stage yet though, and capitalism is still the best system for the time being.

Bingo, except that I think you're being overly pessimistic when you assume that only a minority of folks don't want to engage in IP theft.

Historically, this prediction has proven to be wrong. As productivity increases, demand grows, and so does the job market.

However, I do worry that eventually this particular tide will turn, and we'll reach the point where the typical individual has little to contribute to the economy. In other words, what you say doesn't happen due to the productivity increase per se -- it happens because of a shift in the kinds of skills needed to be productive (compared to automation, for example). I fear that eventually this kind of shift will reach the point where most people can't be productive. In such a world, unbridled Capitalism will fail the majority, leading to revolution. Hopefully, though, we'll have sufficient weaponry to keep the masses at bay and in their hovels. ( )

Vonnegut's Player Piano, written in 1952, concerns the social aspects of this scenario where the typical person has little to contribute to the economy.

If our technology was to reach a level of replicators being possible I would guess we would have found a source of infinite energy by then (probably from space).



If you can replicate any food, clothing, heating device, medicine you want, what do you want to sustain? There would be nothing left to sustain. You could use all your time to be creative. Be a poet, scientist, researcher, musician, or a holodeck designer The real world would be a bit like SL. You don't need to worry about what to eat anymore.



There would be no property anymore. Neither private nor collective property (a world of abundance is not communist).



Undoubtedly true, as history teaches us.

In SL, it is already the case. Content theft is the revolution.

Collapse is a rather strong term for what would happen. The Business Software Association was making the same outlandish claims about the software industry when the GNU method started to become a "threat" to them.

What would happen is that there would be a necessary shift in business models to that of a commission basis similar to what you see with programmers for hire in the open source world already. With the SL economy, you have to look at the other digital economies such as the IT industry for how to deal with the issues of a digital world. Physical meatspace retail doesn't have a clue about this, the economic realities are fundamentally different.

You quickly forget your US history. Trampling consumer rights is a relatively recent invention; our founding fathers thought it was an important enough thing to limit forthright, even if subsequent generations have wiped their ass with the limited copyright cluase.

Completely ignoring the fact that if your services are marketable, you don't need to resort to technological hacks to hold up a failed business model in the first place, regardless of whether or not everyone else is hurting. Find a niche and run with it!

That assumes everyone in business in SL is stupid enough to undersell their skills by enough to ensure that they can't protect their own interests or properly cover costs. In the real world, these businesses would fail. I don't have sympathy for "business" owners that are going to pretend that the same problem doesn't exist online.

IAWTC.

It's only incomparable because they're using a business model that works, instead of insisting on one that doesn't. There is no reason that anybody can't do the same thing they are exclusively within the realm of Second Life.



You got it almost right. The SL economy would be smaller but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Who cares if there's 90,000 people spending a penny at a time when you can have 5000 people spending $20 at a time?

But the quality of the goods would be higher, since the items purchased would tend to be made to order instead of taking a one-size-fits-all approach to everything and shoving it in a box, perhaps not even allowing mod to fix an item to fit a large or small avatar...

Never mind it's not possible: Opensim isn't a grid, it's a software package.

I need no history lessons from you, thanks. You're blithely implying that any mechanical means to protect copyrights is "trampling consumer rights".

I'm dead against "trampling consumer rights", so abandon that strawman. I object to many provisions in DMCA, which goes way too far thanks to effective lobbying by RIAA and others. I'm a big advocate of Fair Use clauses. There's a JIRA entry suggesting that LL implement a "no-copy/no-xfer" permissions ability, and I argued against it, based on Fair Use and Right of First Sales principles.

Do not be so simple-minded to think that just because I disagree with your claims here, and that I do support mechanical means of protecting reasonable IP rights, that I am an advocate of trampling consumer rights.

What business model isn't working? The one in SL, where there's a mechanical permissions system, is working quite well. Furthermore, there's nothing barring people from charging for services only. In SL, you get your choice: selling a service or a product. On a grid with no permissions system, you'd be limited to charging for services.

I agree with that..
i'm not saying don't find a way or to lay down..
my original point was that everyone feels it when the economy gets pinched..
some things get busy in hard times..
any business in things we "have to have" will do better and have an increase..it's their busy season in a sense heheheeh

anything that is looked at as a "want" more than a "need" will see a decrease because the "have to have's" come first and there may not be as much left over for the wants..

the same will apply to Second life but the need for things is really not there..
it's pretty much wants..



In SL if less money was generated around Sl from one thing like content which does pay for many sections of land and many other things..like custom work..that pinch is going to be felt just about everywhere..

so prices are going to drop because we just lost a major money generating machine..a lot did not come here to pull from credit cards and bank accounts from rl..

i'm not saying there won't still be sales or content..just saying there will be smaller cash outs for everyone affected..

it will be ten times the work making what they were making before.. with that you will end up with a big thinning of creators that are investing into a business here because it's just not worth it..

we may see big prices at first to try to cushion the blow..but since anyone can walk in and start up a business that may know our fields..there will be a lot of undercutting until to get the money..

if there is something in SL that someone has to have rather than wants ..then that's the nitch..
other wise those selling the wants instead of the needs will feel the pinch.

the thing with SL that separates it from RL is SL itself is not a need so the needs within are really not there..

money you may have earned from someone earning money in sl would be thinned down..
that is where we will feel it..not from the ones spending from rl accounts..

i used to make really good money in SL and decided to switch what i was doing..
my money created here took a major hit..
since my money here has slowed down i took it more on myself to try and make the things i want rather than buy them..

i think we would end up seeing more people taking it upon themselves rather than coming to me or you..unless it was something they could not do themselves or see themselves doing it..
the leisure spending i think would really slow down..
i could see SL turning into a world of builders like when it first started more than supply and demand..

to relate RL and SL i would say in a better RL economy we would probably not see as big of a pinch..but right now with the way it is in the RL we are seeing a slow down of RL money flowing in..
So the Linden dollars made in here have a bigger impact than they would in a better RL economy..

i have a couple RL businesses of my own and help my father with his as well..we base a lot of things on need and want..
i guess that is blinding me to seeing a need rather than want in Second life..maybe that is why we are having such a hard time understanding each other hehehehe
if you have a Nitch in here keep it hidden well

That's all kind of yesterday's revolution, though.

There are places in the virtual worlds' economy for free open-source content, and for ultra high-priced services (combined: the IBM business model), and some virtual worlds may well succeed for a time offering their customers only those business models.

But as long as there's a grid with something like SL's micro-content / micro-payment model, any grid without it will have a limited, niche appeal. That's one of the many problems OpenSim grids are up against now. The current SL model has a huge competitive advantage: new people can start small profitable businesses without needing an IBM-class team of lawyers and copyright sleuths; sales revenue can support content creation rather than IP enforcement, etc.

In RL, Free Open Source + Services only succeeds as a business model when somebody in the value chain is able to monetize the work product--usually a huge enterprise with very deep pockets operating in the extreme scarcity-based economy of custom services. It's a good model, but it's hardly the only one in our digital future.

Baloo, I got a lot of sympathy with you, but you're really mixing up completely different things here.

Having a few geek tools out-competed by free products didn't make all the existing copy protection technology in real life suddenly stop working, and there's only really a few areas of software where the GNU approach works really well. GPL software had almost no impact on products that don't get geeks excited, one way or another, and the software industry didn't collapse BECAUSE the software industry didn't actually have to give up their nasty proprietary protectionism.

Those areas where it does work happen to be the ones Richard Stallman cares the most about, so it works out for him, and I'm happy for him. Really I am.

But there's no way there would be anything like the variety of products available in SL today without the micropayment system and the permissions system that makes it work.

And yet, you provide no examples of how it's not.